Disconnect
by KittenKin
Summary: A KuroFai story set in Yama and Piffle. Cut off for months from his terrible past and his bloody future, Fai begins to feel disconnected from Fate. Can he make a connection with the one link to his past life that remains to him?
1. Yama no Kuni, day 50

**Warnings:** Spoilers for Yama and Celes. Male/male relationship, sex, language. A fragment of non-con.

**Author's Notes:** Written in response to a request at the LiveJournal community CLAMPkink, specifying unrequited love and plenty of angst. Happy/sad ending was left up to the author, and I chose the happy route. Written from Fai's point of view. I hope to write Kurogane's point of view eventually to better explain his actions.

Zelinxia has written a companion piece to this fic titled "Words Better Left Unspoken" which retells the tale from Kurogane's viewpoint, which is also uploaded to . To jump there, just type "s/7344580/1/Words_Better_Left_Unspoken" in after fanfiction(dot)net/.

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><p>Is it possible for sex to be amazing and terrible at the same time? I think so. I know so.<p>

The first New Moon night, when not even a sliver of the bright shining orb in the sky was visible and there was no trip to the castle for battle, we'd only been in Yama for just over two weeks and everything was still too new and strange and unfamiliar for us to melt into and enjoy the festivities. Even Kurogane who could speak the language and seemed to fit in so well was still holding himself utterly aloof, only taking bottles of alcohol whenever someone staggered near and offered him a drink, otherwise just standing at the edges of the ring of light that the great bonfire cast and watching, watching. All night, only watching, listening, learning. I know because all night _I_ watched _him_.

I watched him day in and day out. What else was there for me to do? Not talk to the other soldiers; I was playing mute, and they were suspicious of my too-fair skin and unusual blonde hair. I had been accepted at first only as an attachment belonging to the great warrior who had quickly won their respect and later demanded that they respect me as well, or at least my person. That had been thrilling in a darkly secret way, to see him suddenly appear without a noise as if he'd just sprung up from the ground, tearing my attackers away from me with an unintelligible roar. He'd bloodied them all with his bare hands, and by the time he'd turned back to me I'd managed to make myself somewhat presentable, but he still grimaced. What was that, I wonder. Probably not pain at seeing a friend attacked. Maybe a twinge of remorse that someone he held himself responsible for - the strong protect the weak, right? - had nearly been abused while his back was turned. Maybe even disgust that I couldn't defend myself as he could have. As he wouldn't have even needed to. You're not a fair person, Kurogane.

I told him I was fine and tried to laugh to show him it was so, since he couldn't understand my words without Mokona anywhere nearby, but he only scowled at me and snarled something short and clipped and angry before dragging me off to the tent that we shared with several others, so that I could change my torn clothes. The upgrade from the common tents of the least ranks was a relief because the raw, rank air of dozens of men living and laughing and loving - or whatever you call that sweaty after-battle adrenaline-fueled coupling - together had stifled me, but it was horrible because at night, Kurogane's breathing was that much louder in the quieter air, his scent that much stronger in my nostrils. He was angry at me for days for the way I laughed despite my fear, and our enemies suffered for it, and his prowess in battle soon earned us the next steps in rank. Our enemies suffered Kurogane's temper, and Yasha-ou granted him - and me, his shadow - new men for him to command, new weapons for me to wield, beasts to ride and a private tent to share. Our enemies suffered Kurogane's temper, and I suffered his presence.

Our second New Moon festival occurred during our fiftieth day in Yama. Apparently this world has a 33 day lunar cycle. We're in the top five of Yasha-ou's men now, both of us having proven our value in battle. We are strong alone and invincible together, having learned over the past several weeks to communicate without speaking. Kurogane has taught me - taking days upon days, two pots of ink, several sheafs of paper and probably twenty replacement brushes as he snaps them one after the other in frustration - the meanings of certain words. So I learned what things like "behind you", "get down" and "follow me" sound like. There's also something that I believe means "get your fucking ass over here right now, you idiot" which he didn't illustrate for me but I've learned to recognize through repetition. We are also now adept at reading each other's body language, and this we have picked up naturally through constantly being together, he to watch over me, I because I cannot resist the sweet torture of always gazing upon that which I cannot have. He's right; I am an idiot.

Only fifty days and already I am losing my sense of self. Cut off as I am from everyone around me except him whom I feel more estranged from than anyone else in any world or dimension, cut off from Syaoran-kun and Sakura-chan and Mokona, I find it easy to also feel that I am cut off from the destiny that had awaited me. My dark past, my darker future...it all seems so far away, as if he and I have been accidentally dropped through a hole in Fate's pocket and rolled into a crack somewhere, left behind and forgotten. We may be stuck here for the rest of our lives. I may never now save Fai, and I may never now need to kill Kurogane. I can forget about Fei-Wang Reed. I can be free to love whom I wish, and live my life as I may. These thoughts began as fancies, then daydreams, and then dangerous fantasies to lose myself in.

We drink away most of the evening of our second New Moon festivities, part of it out among the men and then part of it in the comparative quiet of our tent. He empties bottle after bottle and I quietly babble away at him as is my habit now, when we are alone. We pass bottles back and forth but I only drink enough to put the scent of spirits on my breath. I am drunk on the sight and scent of him; I don't need alcohol. Giddy with the fantasy I am indulging in that this is our new life together and bold because I know he cannot understand me, I tell him I love him for about an hour. I recite a long list of everything that I love about him; physical features, character traits, even his faults and foibles that I find so endearing. I grow a bit melancholy toward the end of it, my delusions not quite so fixed that I can truly believe I am safe here in this little tent with him, that Fate will not reach out her claws to pierce me once more. I tell him that I love him and it's a desperate, choking thing now. I don't purposefully put any plea or sorrow into my voice, but it must leak out because he gives me a strange look and I startle, and in my panic I make a mistake. I laugh.

It's not one of the laughs that I've come to use here where I can speak to him and not lie. I've told him everything in our evenings together when he allows me to babble after a whole day of playing mute. I've told him about my brother, our parents, our grandfather, the tower and valley, my choice, my crime, my rescue, my curse, my education, my betrayal...I've told him everything and I've laughed wryly and bitterly and ruefully and he has just watched me silently through it all. I've grown sorrowful and depressed and he has just knocked me on the head with a low murmur or passed me a bottle with a short sentence. I've gotten frustrated and angry and sarcastic with him and he has just snarled right back at me or even chuckled and smirked. Bastard. I love you.

But now I laugh, and it is that bright, brittle, shallow, stupid laugh that he hates most of all. It seems to offend and anger him like nothing else under the sun, and either my timing is abysmal or he is a bit too drunk, because he growls, throws the bottle in his hand aside to go clattering and clinking among the others littering the floor of our tent and then he is on me. He is the one talking, now, snarling in that clipped, measured language of his with one hand splayed out on the floor and the other shaking me roughly by the collar. It's shocking to me to have him so angry at me when I'd been pouring out my feelings to him just a moment ago. I've born his temper before but I had my armor on. Now he's struck a blow just at the moment when my heart was out in the open, naked and vulnerable, and idiot that I am, when he pauses for breath, I just laugh again.

The look on his face is amazing. He's incredulous. He's not angry anymore, he's infuriated. I can feel his fist tighten in the way my shirt is suddenly choking me and I wonder if he's going to kill me. He kisses me instead. My eyes widen and then shut, and we tumble to the floor, mouths still locked together and hands all over each other. But it's not a romantic scene by any means.

My eyes are screwed shut in pain because the kiss is fierce and ferocious and if it was out of passion it would be incredible, but it's not. It's not. He's angry at me and he's punishing me in the only way that's left to him. I can laugh in his face and evade his sword swings but now my mouth is crushed under his and my body is pinned to the floor. My hands are on his shoulders at first, fisted tight in his shirt and trying desperately to push him off and I part my lips to cry out to him for mercy or forgiveness but then his tongue is in my mouth and I'm pulling now instead of pushing. He growls and I can feel it in my teeth and in my chest and definitely lower down and now I'm clawing at him and pressing up into him and he stops abusing my mouth long enough to bite me hard at the base of my neck. I'm not laughing anymore.

We fuck. It's not love-making. It's hardly even sex. It's a savage rutting between savage beasts. He's asserting his power and dominance over me and I yield to everything he does out of a wild desperation that I can hardly define. I'll never have him as I wish; I might as well take what I can of him. It's all I'll get. It's all I'll ever have the chance for. It's all I deserve.

He douses the lamp and uses the oil to slick himself, and me. I wish I could read something of care and concern in the fact that he even bothers to prepare me but I suppose it's the logical thing to do; we have to be back in the saddle tomorrow evening and he's used to me watching his back. He works me over with his hands, rough and hard and I'm coming before he's even pushed into me. And then he does, and I'd scream with pain and pleasure, love and lust, fear and frustration, save that he's plundering my mouth with his tongue as harsh and hard as our other joining, and the sounds are lost between us.

He's moving in me, draped over my back now and I'm quiet and quivering, mindless from my second orgasm and only half-aware of him growling something at me over and over as he thrusts, one of his hands gripping the arm I have splayed over the bed and the other bruising my hip as I kneel on the floor. It's dark and hot and stifling in the tent, the lamp out, no moon, even the torches of the revelry doused at this late-early hour. Everything is dark, dark, and all I can see is black and red and all I can hear are his hot breaths in my ear saying something that I don't understand.

Maybe he's telling me how much he hates weaklings like me.

When he finally unravels, clutching me convulsively against him as he goes taut and tense, filling me pulse after pulse, he bites me again on the shoulder and I sob.


	2. Yama no Kuni, day 149

Once we started, we didn't stop, like that first crash together during the second New Moon festival had been a step we both took off the edge of a sheer cliffside, and there was no climbing back up or even stopping, just a dizzying free fall straight down. Tonight is the fifth New Moon festival, so I know he won't take me. For some reason we have sex every night - and some mornings - except on these New Moon festivals, as if he's taking a break from every sort of battle, both at the moon castle and in our tent. Or in the river. Or up against a tree. Or in the fallen leaves beyond the maple ridge.

I am insatiable, and he is still angry.

There were times, months ago, when he would be gentle, and careful, and it was so heartbreaking to have this mimicry of love that I could have accused him of doing it on purpose, save that despite everything I'm convinced he doesn't know how I feel, and because I know that he isn't cruel. Despite everything, not cruel. He has hurt me, hurts me still, but it's just the way he is; direct and brutally honest and fierce. I don't blame a wolf for having fangs. I blame myself for allowing myself to fall in love with someone I betray with every breath I take, whom I have promised to kill someday.

The soft kisses and slow caresses hurt me more than anything, especially because I knew he was still angry, offended and hating me because he still murmured the same pattern of sounds that were falling from his mouth over and over that first time. I recognized them, and though I didn't know what they meant, still don't, I remembered when I first heard them, and held onto them in my mind to never let myself forget that he does not love me no matter how carefully he holds me.

The gentleness hurt me most of all, and so I fought him. He pressed a soft kiss to my lips, and I bit him. He flinched back and growled something at me, then brushed the hair out of my eyes and tried again at my neck. I dug my claws into his skin and bit his ear, and when he flinched again and pulled back to glare at me, I attacked his mouth with teeth and tongue, raking my fingernails against his scalp and writhing against him. Like this. Like before. Stop with the soft touches; I am the only liar here.

He stopped, and we soon fell into a pattern, a rhythm, adding this new beat to our new life in Yama. The heat of battle, and then the flames of desire. Thirty-two days of sweat and sex, and then one quiet night where we only drank, and inexplicably still bedded down together. I tried to fight him on this as well, as I had with the gentleness; it seemed pointless and dangerous to sleep together without the sex, but he simply smashed me into the bed and grumbled at me to shut up. I knew that phrase well. I struggled and complained for a bit, but then he grabbed me by the hair and held his face close to mine while pinning my hands down. He just hovered, breath warm on my lips, ever so faintly nuzzling, threatening to kiss me the way I hated. I subsided, and he let me go. I turned my back on him, and he spooned up behind me on the narrow bed. I flinched and curled into myself, and he held me tight and murmured those things to me again.

It is the 149th day since we landed in Yama. I am beginning to truly despair and hope. Surely Syaoran-kun and the others would have found us by now, if they were ever going to. Surely Fei-Wang Reed would have appeared through a slit in space and time by now, if he still needed me for his plans. Now that Kurogane is cut off from the clones, surely I need not kill him.

I have memorized the little phrases Kurogane murmurs to me as we grapple together, as he wraps himself around me to sleep, as he watches me with those unnerving black eyes as I smile or scowl or snark at him. I am slowly learning the language that he speaks, and someday I will find out what he is saying to me. Whether he is calling me names, berating me for a coward and a weakling and a liar, or simply telling me over and over that he hates me in a half dozen different ways. 


	3. Yama no Kuni, day 150

Mokona is here. It's such a shock when I can suddenly understand with complete clarity everything that everyone is saying all around me that I blurt out my surprise to Kurogane in the middle of camp. Thankfully the clash of training swords covers the sound of my voice, and no one notices my slip. No one, of course, except for the ninja, who gives me a long look of open surprise before turning his head away and muttering something about it having taken the brats long enough to get here. When he turns back to me, his face is as solemn and inscrutable as always. Those are the last words we speak to each other the rest of the day.

He sleeps in his own bed that night. 


	4. Piffle, day 3

The rest of our adventure in Yama was disorienting. It was as if most of it had never happened. The pattern broke, the rhythm was gone. I fell back into calling him ridiculous names and babbling light-heartedly when we were alone just to break the silence. I didn't have the courage to ask about what he would no longer act on. Besides, I was back in Fei-Wang Reed's clutches; I had no right to try to bridge gaps and heal breaches, as if we had a future to try to preserve. At night I slept alone, curled tight around the pain and wondering what, exactly, I was grieving the loss of.

We are in a completely new world, as different from Yama as one could wish. There is something called "technology" that pervades almost every aspect of daily life, and it is bewildering and bewitching at the same time. Our eyes are back to normal and so is the distance between us. I smile and lie and he growls back while looking straight at me, frustration and anger shining out in those red eyes. Our journey and adventures continue and we are as we were before Yama, except that at night my body hurts because it lacks that satisfying ache it has foolishly gotten used to, and my bed is cold as it never was before despite the artificial heat that pumps through our living quarters through strange silvery pipes.

It is the third day before I remember the words I had been determined to find out the meaning of. Mokona makes some chance remark that has both sweet Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun blushing, and when I try to share in the joke, the children turn the subject to me instead. They were apparently speaking of their time in Shura, and commiserate with me again on the long nearly half-year that Kurogane-san and I were cut off from them, and how difficult it must have been to have been unable to speak. I laugh it off, and the moment passes, but I remember. I remember.

As soon as I am alone, Kurogane in the garage and the other three off on a shopping trip, I grab a piece of paper and an ever-so-nifty "ballpoint" and begin writing, scribing out phonetically the sounds I memorized over ninety-nine beautiful, brutal days. I go over them multiple times, frowning in concentration and making sure I have written them all out correctly, placing accents and stresses where they should go. With one more glance out the hallway at the door to the garage to confirm my privacy, I take a deep breath, steel myself for whatever final heartbreak might hit my ears - I need to know - and begin reciting.

I almost get to the end of the list of sounds before my voice breaks and my knees hit the floor. My eyes are snapping back and forth, looking at nothing but searching desperately for something to hold on to. I'm dreaming. I'm having a nightmare. I'm feverish and insane. I make myself look at the paper, now trembling uncontrollably in my hand, and start reciting again. And again. And again, until I finally make it through everything he was growling and whispering and snarling and murmuring at me for ninety nine days. I'm shaking and sobbing and just then _he_ walks in, wrench in hand and frown in place, looking for something, and sees me instead.

Hitsuzen is a bitch.

He startles to see me breaking down in the middle of the kitchen and glances at the paper, but of course he can't read the spidery Celesian script, and brings his eyes back to my face. Before he can speak, I do.

"I _do_ trust you," I cry out to him, and he frowns in confusion because I'm responding to a conversation we last had about a week ago. And then it hits him, and his eyes go wide and he sucks in a sudden breath of shock. Again I interrupt him before he can say a word, surging to my feet and practically yelling at him now, my paper crumpled in my hands and my heart breaking over how stupid we've both been. We're both idiots.

"I've been looking at you for _months_, I've heard _everything_ you said, and I _would_ have opened up to you if I'd only _known_. For God's sake why didn't you just _tell_ me? I would have...oh God I _would_ have let you love me...I _did_ love you...I _do_ love you..."

I'm completely broken now and sobbing like a lunatic and he just stares at me while I cry for every wasted moment. Everything that's held me back, every fear and pang of guilt, every thought of my past and my future, it's all gone now, disappeared more completely in the face of my discovery than it had been hidden under my delusions and daydreams in Yama. He stares, frozen, then suddenly throws the wrench away, takes one long stride forward with his hands outstretched and then he is on me. He's covered with grease and sweat and I couldn't care less; I throw my arms around him and meet his mouth halfway, tasting salt sweat and the chemical tang of oil and loving every bit of it. My hands twist in his hair and it must be painful but he doesn't seem to care, only crushes me to his chest and I'm breathless from the pressure and the contrasting sudden release of that tight pain in my own chest. Even after we crash together he's still moving, walking me backwards into the kitchen table and then lifting me onto it with one quick surge of his strong arms.

I yelp because he sits me down on a fork and then I'm laughing uncontrollably because it's so stupid. All the months of torture turn out to be one horrific misunderstanding, and here we are in the middle of our great revelation and a (for-adults-only) storybook romance scene and he sits me down on a fork. He's looking at me like I've gone utterly insane so I explain between hiccups while pulling the utensil out from under me, then I tell him he's a pain in the ass and I'm laughing so hard I start crying. Again. It's so stupid and mixed up and just so us. I'm so relieved and overwhelmed that I feel him drag me off the table with one arm but I don't realize where he's leading me as I wheeze and gasp and wipe my tears away.

It's only when I land on my butt on a much softer surface that I finally open my eyes and find myself in his bedroom. I hiccup again and then look at him in surprise, and the expression on his face as he sits down on the edge of the bed and brushes the traces of tears from my cheeks makes me want to cry all over again, but I don't. I smile, and he smiles back. He leans over, bends to bring his face close to mine and I am dying of a heart attack as he smirks and growls at me.

"You'd better not bite me this time," he says, voice heavy with an empty threat. I try to promise that I won't, but he's already closed the distance between us, and I fumble the words against his lips, soft against my mouth. Strong fingers are gentle against my scalp as he lightly runs them through my hair to cup the back of my head while he continues pressing light, lingering kisses onto my lips. I soon grow impatient for more and tug lightly with the hands that I've wrapped around his neck while giving his lower lip a quick lick and suck. He growls and this time it sounds like a purr to me, and a laugh of pure relief and joy and love bubbles up out of me as he sinks me slowly down onto the blankets. He quirks an eyebrow at the noise and examines my face, then tells me he loves the sound of my laugh.

I look at him in surprise at first, but then I get it, and pull him in for another kiss, more insistent than the others. My demands are met with eagerness and soon we're lost in each other. I writhe and moan and drag at him with my hands as if I'm dying for more closeness although he's already tangling with me from head to toe. He's murmuring to me again and this time I understand him and every "yes" that falls from my lips causes an interruption in his endless litany of requests as we kiss to seal our promises.

We make love.


End file.
